An essay on the flaws of Clinton’s messaging in the 2016 campaign
by Ron Ovadia | Nov. 15, 2016
Did you get the message, Democrats? Especially party leaders who smugly predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide in the presidential election only to realize there were no glass ceilings shattered, only a party left in shambles. The message is, the Democrats didn’t really have a message. Sure, the election autopsy reveals as many findings as there were scalpels cutting through the Democratic corpse, but most of the intervening events were external forces that couldn’t be controlled. Even the glaring problem Clinton brought on herself, the poor judgment of using private email servers, could have been diffused with more forthright transparency and contrition from day one. In truth, in spite of the perfect storm of myriad events that influenced the 2016 election, Clinton could have and should have still won the election. So why didn’t she?
The one thing Clinton could control was her brand and her message, and she and her team did a lousy job. In a campaign where resentment overshadowed reason, salesmanship eclipsed statesmanship, and perception became reality, the candidate with the better brand and the ability to rebrand his opponent to her detriment won this election. It helps when Secretary Clinton, mired in a distracting, trumped-up email scandal, could not articulate her messages in a meaningful way – and didn’t. She never gave voters a reason why they should even care – not enough of them. And let’s be clear, Trump stoking the fires of an untapped caldron of anger and stroking himself with self-adulation, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney four years earlier. This election was less about Trump’s popularity, promises, and ability to fire up a crowd with incendiary rhetoric as it was Clinton’s inability to inspire more than 47.8% of voters to vote for her, compared to Obama’s 51% four years ago. That was the difference.
The enthusiasm gap between Clinton and Trump, as with Clinton versus Obama four years previous, was huge. Obama was an inspiring figure, as was Trump with his base. Clinton wasn’t. Both Obama and Trump knew how to tap into the beat of America, while Clinton could never quite find a pulse. A candidate must deliver a clear, compelling message that inspires people, then deliver on that promise. Clinton didn’t really have a message. Unable to sell a compelling message, the spin artists on the other side swept in to fill the vacuum. Trump pointed to all her shortcomings while promising to “Make America Great Again.” The bleak picture of America he painted, accurate or not, looked a lot better than the status quo. According to Trump, he alone could change things and help America start winning again – “winning” being the essence of his brand. Who wouldn’t want to identify with a winner, or the perception of one, if so much of your reality – a job, your dignity, and hope itself – might have had been lost?
Meanwhile, Clinton was fighting an uphill battle, running in an election year where voters yearned for change. A 25-year insider who represented continuity needed a dynamic message to offset this objection. It wasn’t enough simply to extend Obama’s legacy; she had to define her own identity. Unfortunately, she played it too safe, unable to walk the fine line between leveraging Obama’s successes and admitting the need for improvement. She paid lip service to voter concerns, and it appeared she simply wasn’t listening. Clinton needed to acknowledge the pain many people were feeling and admit that a lot of workers had been left behind, explaining, however, that these dispossessed workers could be part of the burgeoning 21st century technologies, where renewal energy-sector jobs, among others, could renew their hopes.
If change was in the air, Clinton also needed to talk about a “change for the better” and relentlessly rebrand Trump’s brand of change as “reckless change.” Next was telling the whole truth about Obamacare, which represented “a start” toward universal healthcare but hardly a success, reminding voters that there would be many improvements to come. In the meantime, she could have presented personal stories of those whose lives were changed because of Obamacare, filling in the deflated successes with inspiring stories – Obama-style.
Her deaf ear to the ills of immigration was also glaring. It was off-key to remind Americans that diversity is the hallmark of our nation and that immigrants, even Syrian refugees, would be welcome in far greater numbers. A more resonant message would have been to propose a “compassionate yet cautious” immigration policy – a humane alternative to building border walls, breaking up families through mass deportation, slamming the door on dreamers, and banning Moslems – the latter being unconstitutional and violating the spirit of our nation. Nor was it enough to summarily dismiss Trump’s positions, no matter how outrageous, when there was a core of verity in some of the issues he raised. In addition, Clinton’s message, “Stronger together,” did little to reach an electorate that wondered, “How can I feel stronger?” It seemed this message was directed inward toward her own party as much as outward to the general public, partly aimed at convincing Sanders supporters to get onboard so the Democratic party would be stronger together. It wasn’t nearly strong enough.
A stronger theme would have been Bridging the divide, which acknowledges a “problem” rather than simply addressing the endpoint (Stronger together). It would’ve provided a platform for bridging the divide between progressives and conservatives, urban and small-town America, West/East coasts and the heartland, whites and blacks, even the divide between those benefiting from progress and those left behind. This kind of promise could have helped voters feel that they could benefit from this bridge and, by extension, from her candidacy. A bridge is also a positive image in stark contrast to a wall. And “bridging the divide” is an act of change, an antidote to the potential stagnancy in yet another Democratic administration. Another direction might have been to convey the inclusive message of Opportunity for all – an outcome of bridging a divide. Regrettably, Clinton’s campaign had squandered months with the meaningless theme, “Fighting for us.” And they made little progress crafting a meaningful message – something around which to build a compelling story. Any Clinton supporter would have been hard-pressed to succinctly articulate the essence of her campaign. Unlike “Make America Great Again,” Clinton’s theme didn’t reflect the greatness of America or its potential, nor did it provide a vision for bridging the two.
Having a clear and compelling message was especially critical while master character assassinator Steve Bannon identified and magnified cracks in Clinton’s armor – relentlessly and dishonestly demonizing her. Put on the defensive, Clinton lost site of a brand strategy or how to build her message. And it wasn’t enough simply to have an anti-Trump message.
Clinton wasn’t the only one neutralized by team Trump. In the primaries, Trump negatively labeled his three main adversaries: Jeb Bush was “low energy”; Ted Cruz was “lying Ted”; Marco Rubio was “little Marco.” Now Clinton was “crooked Hillary,” with a vile battle cry to “lock her up” – led shamelessly by two former prosecutors, Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani. This venomous rhetoric reinforced her already tarnished character – unfairly but effectively. Between email servers, questions about impropriety in the Clinton Foundation, and a questionable foreign policy in Libya (which Obama himself called “his biggest mistake”), Clinton was an easy target. Despite her vast experience, she was recast as a career politician and an insider – part of a corrupt Washington swamp that needed to be drained.
Historically, Democrats had been the party of the working class. Suddenly she was branded as an elitist who couldn’t connect with ordinary working class people. Her crippling connections with Wall Street and paid speeches didn’t help either, plus a two-faced image she herself portrayed as the necessary split between needing a private and a public persona. It was clear she played by a different set of rules. To make matters worse, Clinton labeled many of Trump’s base his “basket of deplorables” – her single biggest messaging gaffe of the campaign. It reinforced the gulf between her, as a nose-in-the-air elitist, and the masses, and helped galvanize Trump’s supporters far more than she could ever energize her own base. Whether many of Trump’s supporters deserved the label is irrelevant, it was one time Clinton should have abstained from telling anything close to the truth. The fact is, even if Trump himself preached bigotry, most Americans who voted for him did so not because of his bigotry but in spite of it.
Meanwhile, Trump hammered home his messages and served up simple sound-byte solutions where people didn’t want substance. (And they had little interest in visiting Clinton’s website to read about her policies.) Like a good salesman, he identified needs or concocted them, then went about filling these needs. If people had fears, he had answers to assuage those fears. If people felt unheard, he listened to them and echoed their frustrations. If people were angry, he mirrored that anger and directed it at the establishment, regardless of political party. He played to emotions and connected at a visceral level, harnessing the prevailing winds of resentment while avoiding anything beyond one-dimensional policies.
Trump’s rallies were like massive focus groups, where he would masterfully gauge his crowd then tweak his messages according to what raised the emotional needle a few more decibels. He and Bannon borrowed a page from the Joseph Goebbels’ playbook: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The public did just that. In this post-truth age of social media, where facts and fiction are indecipherable and messages spread like wildfire, they lied unabashedly, peddling propaganda and serving up distorted half-truths, which are harder to decipher and easier to swallow.
Suddenly the Republican party, long the bastion of privileged elite, was luring blue-collar workers, with an opportunistic New York billionaire landing his gold-plated jet in the heartlands – igniting crowds with explosive, populist rhetoric and an unrelenting repudiation of mainstream politics. It worked like magic. Trump created a brand unlike any the Republicans had ever seen, which makes sense considering Trump is really neither Republican nor Democrat, but an Independent – “more pragmatic than ideological,” in the words of Obama, and totally opportunistic. This helped Trump correctly assess the prevailing resentment in an electorate yearning for change, and it underscored the noticeable disconnect between Clinton, the elitist, and a country beating to a populist drum.
So what’s the prognosis? What’s the real message here? As the Democrats scramble to resuscitate their party, should they lean on experience or assemble a team of fresh faces with fresh idea? Should they play to their progressive base or lean toward the center? Upheaval creates opportunity. This could be a time of great introspection, focused on constructive change and growth. What they shouldn’t do is dwell on Comey’s influence on the election and instead vet a candidate who doesn’t give the FBI anything to investigate in the first place. Don’t make the Electoral College the culprit either. Change what you can control, and accept what you can’t. Also, avoid the convenient 20-20 vision of hindsight – whether Joe Biden would’ve connected better with the working class or if Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, as his VP, might have strengthened the bridge with rural, small-town America. Both true, both irrelevant.
Hindsight must now be replaced by insight. The Democrats must learn from their mistakes. They managed to overlook the pain in working class America, but they don’t need to scrap the Democratic playbook in order to win the next presidential election. Demographics are not destiny. Candidates count most, coupled with good, solid messaging. The art is marrying the two in a way that is organic, not opportunistic. If that combination is not inspiring, not enough people will come out to vote – it’s that simple. What one can’t do is run a candidate whose flaws going into a campaign, real or perceived, are fair targets. Flaws will be exacerbated, unless one compensates for a deeply flawed candidate with an airtight message. Case in point: Donald Trump. In spite of his glaring inadequacies and ill-suited temperament, his message struck a nerve in the most vulnerable of Americans. Now he must deliver.
Candidates are said to campaign in poetry and govern in prose. How this equation applies to a firebrand like Trump, who largely campaigned in expletives, remains to be seen. He performance will be factored into the Democrats’ strategy moving forward – and move forward they must. In four years the Democrats must run a candidate who can turn crowds on and not pick someone because it’s their turn to run – someone with an uplifting, all-inclusive message that is clear and compelling. Wanted: a rock star with a rock-solid promise. This combination of messenger and message will have to inspire grassroots efforts and voter turnout across America, from millennials to older Americans. It will have to resuscitate a party and its brand helping the Democrats turn a devastating defeat into a hopeful future. I hope they get the message. They will need one.